September 7, 2008

That's just how he rolls. One of those individual effort plays that when it happened almost everyone thought, "I was here to see that." Image by Amanda C. Melton on Georgiadogs.com. Click to enlarge the image and buy your copy from Georgiadogs.

I've been complaining about ESPN myself. Ugh! All the hype over Florida and Ohio State yet a few seconds on Georgia. Whatever. They suck. I hate that I have to turn to them for any kind of sports information. I'm sticking to blogs.

I just noticed that was Staff down there with him. What the??? How many qb's do you know who actually run downfield looking to throw a block? (besides Tebow and Sanchez, of course, b/c they're like dreamy and like the greatest people to ever play football. ESPN told me to say that)

Did anyone notice that powerhouse Virginia? They managed to hold Richmond 3-0 for three querters. Wow...I suppose that proves how "tough" USC's 1st week win was. Actually, since UF beat one of those tough ACC schools, I'm surprised they didn't jump to No. 2in the polls.

I am not sure that Forde, Schlabach and the other ESPN writers have much to say about what goes into the highlight packages on TV.

I think Schlabach is amenable to UGA, don't you? (Check where he got his diploma).

I was disappointed since I had heard about this move that it was not shown on the highlights. Even in other blowouts, such a play usually gets shown.

Yet another good reason ESPN takes over the TV contract in the future!

As for the loss of votes, I am not too surprised. As noted, does the weekly voting reflect what the final outcome is going to be (predictive) or an evaluation of the current condition. Between the times the pre-season polls were made and the end of game 1 UGA lost 2 key starters both of whom had to be considered for All Conference honors. A less than impressive win against a 1-AA team did not help either.

What will be interesting is to see what the voters do with Ohio State after its poor performance against Ohio. (Ohio is not very good and might be considered the equal or even slightly below that of a top 1-AA team such as Appalachian State).

Ohio State drops to 5 in both polls, but guess who gets the lion's share of their first place votes? That's right, the team that was idle but who laid a butt-whooping on a team that got taken into the 4th quarter by Richmond. ESPNU? No, ESPNFU!

The photo at the top of the post is a wide aspect shot but the one on georgiadogs.com is not. Anyone know where I can find the shot from above. Knowshon is quickly taking over my georgia wall. The guy is amazing.

A really good version of the jump was in the print version of the Banner-Herald. I would bet money it is also in their online version. Probably can be copied, even as long as you don't republish and try to take credit.

Those of you wondering why ESPN didn’t run on either SportsCenter or its College Football Final shows highlights of Knowshon Moreno’s run in which he hurdles Central Michigan safety Vince Agnew, Georgia coach Mark Richt was, too.

I asked him about it on his weekly Sunday teleconference call and it initiated a pretty interesting exchange between me, him, a guy from an ESPN-affiliated website and a guy supposedly with Fox Sports South.

Richt had said after Saturday’s game he was looking forward to seeing Moreno’s run again on SportsCenter. I asked him if he was surprised they didn’t show it.

Richt: “Yeah. They missed the boat or didn’t do their homework or whatever. I don’t know how they couldn’t have noticed that as thorough as it seems like that are most of the time. But it’s going to make our highlights for a long time.”

Then Brett Jensen of “TotalUGA.com,” which covers Georgia athletics for ESPN, piped in.

Jensen: “I spoke to some people up in Connecticut about that today. They said Fox, who had control of the game, didn’t put that in that highlight in the highlight package they sent up to the satellite.”

Richt: “Really? You’re kidding me? [Starts laughing] Oh, so you’ throw Fox under the bus? I threw you ESPN under the bus and now you Fox under the bus. That’s the way it works.”

Then a guy who’s name I couldn’t make out who claims he’s with Fox chimes in? “They had cameras. They could have pulled it off the satellite.”

Richt: “Maybe it just wasn’t that good of a play. I don’t know. I thought it was pretty good.”

I'm not up on broadcasting laws, but I'm fairly sure ESPN can not run FOX's video without their permission. This is the highlite video FOX sent them for that night. I have to defend ESPN on this one. If Knowshon had done that on the WWL, they would have replayed it many times. This is something between ESPN and Fox.